Comparing three pedagogical approaches to psychomotor skills acquisition

We compared traditional pedagogical approaches such as time- and repetition-based methods with proficiency-based training. Laparoscopic novices were assigned randomly to 1 of 3 training conditions. In experiment 1, participants in the time condition practiced for 60 minutes, participants in the repetition condition performed 5 practice trials, and participants in the proficiency condition trained until reaching a predetermined proficiency goal. In experiment 2, practice time and number of trials were equated across conditions. In experiment 1, participants in the proficiency-based training conditions outperformed participants in the other 2 conditions (P <.014); however, these participants trained longer (P <.001) and performed more repetitions (P <.001). In experiment 2, despite training for similar amounts of time and number of repetitions, participants in the proficiency condition outperformed their counterparts (P <.038). In both experiments, the standard deviations for the proficiency condition were smaller than the other conditions. Proficiency-based training results in trainees who perform uniformly and at a higher level than traditional training methodologies.